


Let There Be Light

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Not A Fix-It, Post-Episode: s11e09 O Brother Where Art Thou, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5448203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to 11.09. Lucifer isn't quite done with the visions yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let There Be Light

**Author's Note:**

> Not a fix-it; more of a make-it-worse.

It’s worse when Lucifer goes quiet.

Sam knows that without knowing exactly how he knows it, which tells him it’s something he doesn’t want to examine too closely. The silence keeps him on edge, waiting for the next shock—but it lets him think, too, and he isn’t sure that’s a good thing. The initial, instinctual spike of terror recedes, and his fears shape themselves around possibilities instead. They take worldly form; turn real.

If Lucifer could reach out and touch Sam’s mind from within the Cage, what else might he have been able to do? How much does he know about what’s going on out there? How many other people—or demons, or whoever—are under his influence? What might he have set in motion already?

Sam presses himself into a corner, back to the bars of the cell, and tries to put all the possibles out of his mind, to fall back on old lessons instead. Dad’s voice in his head, an edge of impatience to it: _What’s the first thing you do when you’re trapped?_ Dean in his peripheral vision, biting his lip against the urge to blurt out the answers for fear of a John Winchester verbal evisceration. 

What’s the first thing you do when you’re trapped? Look for another exit. Study the bars, the joints and the hinges. Identify the weaknesses that might provide a way out.

Don’t think about what else you’d be releasing if you managed to find one.

Beyond the bars, there’s no sign of Crowley or Rowena. Maybe they split when the warding failed, or maybe one of them set this up from the beginning. Rowena wants the Book of the Damned, and she wants Crowley’s ass kicked, and maybe she thinks Lucifer’s the guy to do it. Crowley, in his own creeptastic way, still wants Dean, and he’d be over the moon to have Sam out of the picture. Could have been either one of them—but whatever, pointing fingers isn’t gonna help him now.

Sam breathes in through his nose, out slowly through his mouth, the way he does when he’s running, trying to center himself. His breath plumes white before his face. He flexes his fingers experimentally, and finds they’re already starting to go numb.

Somehow, he doesn’t often think about that part. How everything around Lucifer burns cold, Hell forever freezing over. Compared to all the other crap, it feels trivial, but the reality of it right now makes all his senses prickle, memories scratching at locked doors in the deepest recesses of his mind. He feels the bars of the cell right through his jacket, like ice against his back, like a brand.

“I know what was in those visions.”

The voice makes him start. It’s thoughtful, measured, the kid-on-Christmas-morning glee tamped down now that Lucifer knows there’s no chance of his favorite chew-toy getting away again. If it was even real in the first place. Could all have been an act, a distraction to keep Sam from seeing whatever big picture Lucifer has his eye on. Sam takes another deep breath and tries not to listen.

“I mean, I designed them for you myself. They do say home-made gifts are the best, right?”

Sam thinks about staying quiet. Surely he’s antagonized the Devil enough for one lifetime. Whatever’s going to happen here, maybe he should just let it. If he fights, he’ll only be giving himself false hope.

That’s the crux of it, though, isn’t it? Hope: the flipside of fear. The only thing keeping him going for years now, maybe since he took on the Trials. So maybe he isn’t ready to let go of it just yet.

“Are you going somewhere with this, or…?” Sam tries hard to keep the tremor out of his voice. It doesn’t work, and he can’t help but shift his gaze sideways a fraction, gauging reaction from the corner of his eye. Something else that feels more familiar than it should, a shadow skittering around the edges of memory.

From his position wedged into the corner, all he can see of Lucifer are his eyes. Irises a sickly red, tiny twin blood moons in the shadows. They hold him pinned like a prey animal as Lucifer moves toward him, into the light. 

That easy shrug, then, that quirk of the mouth. A startling, almost-human contrast. “Not exactly visions of Heavenly light, were they, Sammy? Honestly, I thought I was being obvious.”

Sam’s bitterness comes out in a snort. “Yeah, well. I guess I’m not that smart.”

Lucifer puts his head to one side, that gesture half the angels Sam has ever met have had in common. “And yet you truly thought God was reaching out to you. That this was what he wanted you to do. What a masochist you must be.” He pauses, not smirking, which is actually pretty unsettling. Gleeful sadism—Sam knows what to do with that, how to fear it. Having the devil talk to you like he’s your goddamn therapist, that’s a whole other species of weird. “Not that I ever saw much evidence of—well.” Lucifer flaps a hand, cutting himself off. “Not important.”

Masochism would be the wrong word, anyway. There’s no thrill in necessary suffering, and that’s the only kind Sam has known in a long time. Since the Cage, maybe. Since the incomplete final Trial. Since he watched his brother kill Death and got up off his knees and was greeted by a sky boiling over with Darkness. 

Always the same heavy truth: this sacrifice wasn’t enough. Always another one down the line, and another and another and another. Any good the Winchesters do in the world will be bought with pain. It’s the shadow side of his optimism, the part he keeps quiet around Dean because he can’t stand to hear the denial, or the way it inevitably stutters out into hopelessness.

No keeping it quiet here, though, so he just looks down at his hands and says, “Thought I was being a realist.”

“Mmm.” More agreement than amusement, Lucifer eyeing him steadily. “Not so far off the mark. Maybe it isn’t about how much you hate yourself—and trust me, Sam, I know you do.” He spreads his hands, and there’s a glimmer of something that’s almost sympathy in his expression. Sam grits his teeth against it. “I also know what God is really like. And you’re not dumb—not for a human, anyway. I think you know that, too. I think you know it better than you’d like to admit.”

Still not a taunt. It’s patient, like Lucifer is trying to lead him to some conclusion at his own pace. 

Which isn’t exactly comforting, but it tells Sam he doesn’t have to brace himself for any sudden attack right this moment. Gives him the courage to look Lucifer in the eyes and say, “Really? The ‘We’re not so different, you and I’ speech? You think I’m gonna go for that, after everything you—” He breaks off there, a phantom tang of blood on the back of his tongue.

Lucifer gives him that pitying look again. “I made you a promise once, Sam.”

Right. The _I’ll never lie to you_ thing. 

But here they are.

It takes Sam a moment to recognise the thing that twists in his guts, that surges up in him, hot and bitter. He’s been swallowing down anger so long he’s almost forgotten what it tastes like. What it is to give it free rein, knowing there’s nobody here he could ever fear hurting. 

He pushes off the bars and stands at his full height, hands clenched into fists against the cold. “And then you got inside my head and pretended to be God.” This time, his voice doesn’t shake.

“Now, _that’s_ not fair.” An edge of danger beneath the words—as though Sam needs the reminder of who, _what_ , he’s dealing with. “You put two and two together. Don’t blame me if you came up with five.”

“You didn’t exactly clear things up when you had the chance.”

Lucifer makes a wry face. “You were so convinced. It was adorable.” He drops the smile, then. Holds out a hand, palm up, a parody of a placating gesture. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll make it up to you. Nothing but the truth.”

“And why would I believe you?” Sam fights the urge to shrink back into his corner. “How could I?”

Another shrug, and then Lucifer moves into his space, raises his hand. Sam flinches, but there is no blow, no wave of cold fire beneath his skin. Just fingertips pressed to his forehead, a fraction too cool to be human, not really solid and not really insubstantial, either.

Peace washes over him.

The feeling that takes hold of him is just like the one from his vision. It smooths all of the worries from his mind, promises him everything will be okay now. Only he isn’t _there_ anymore. There’s no cage, no Lucifer. The sound and fury of Hell beyond the bars has faded. All Sam can hear is the wind in the tall grass.

Two figures stand in front of him.

Dean is facing away from him. He’d recognise his brother anywhere, but there’s something weird about the set of Dean’s shoulders, the way he holds himself. An unguarded looseness Sam hasn’t seen in—well, maybe ever. On Dean, who still sleeps with a weapon in arm’s reach, who trusts rarely and never completely, it looks unnatural.

Sam doesn’t know the woman standing in front of his brother, and he’s pretty sure he’d remember her if he’d seen her before. She’s striking, all razor cheekbones and statuesque posture, an eerie certainty in the way she watches Dean’s face.

She steps toward Dean, then. Lifts her arms, and the neckline of her dress shifts slightly, revealing a corner of angry red against her skin.

The Mark of Cain. Amara, all grown up.

She cups the sides of Dean’s face and leans in, opening her mouth as though she wants to inhale something. No: as though she wants to consume something.

Sam can’t move. He should stop her. Tear her away from his brother, yell at Dean to run. But his feet are rooted to the ground, and he knows without being told that he could shout himself hoarse and neither Dean nor Amara would hear him.

The scene flickers, dims, and then he’s back in the dark and the cold, his heart still pounding. 

Lucifer lets his hand drop to his side, watching Sam with cool interest. Sam struggles to school his face into calm.

“That wasn’t real,” he protests. “It was just another trick.” But his voice wavers. Dean’s trancelike posture—just like in Crowley’s headquarters, when Sam burst in on him failing to kill Amara. Just like all those times he’s spaced out, thinking about the Darkness, and Sam has had to struggle to get through to him. 

Lucifer raises an eyebrow. “Checked your messages lately?”

“Just because Dean isn’t here doesn’t mean—” Sam bites off the rest of his sentence, settling for a vague hand gesture to indicate the whole creepy-ass scene he just saw. “How would you even know what’s going on out there?”

It sounds weak, even to him. Lucifer might know Sam too well for comfort, but he doesn’t know Dean. How would he know about Dean’s whole weird deal with Amara, if he couldn’t see out into the world? Or Amara’s soul-eating, for that matter? Last time Lucifer encountered her, human souls hadn’t even been invented. 

Hope: it’s slipping through Sam’s fingers like sand.

“Sam.” Lucifer gives him this disappointed look, like he’s a particularly slow kindergartener. Speaks with the kind of exaggerated patience that makes you fear it could splinter into rage at any second. “I could reach out to you because we’re connected. You understand that.”

Sam gives a quick nod. Remembers what Cas told him, after the whole Gadreel shitshow—how angels leave a trace of grace behind in the humans they possess. He’d tried not to think too hard about the implications of that at the time, but it’s hard to escape them now.

“And you know I helped put the Darkness away last time, so you’ve heard her origin story already. Auntie A and I, we’re connected, too. It’s kind of in the name.” Lucifer makes a vague up-and-down gesture, indicating himself. “I’m the reason for your existence, she’s the reason for mine. Circle of life, Sammy.”

“None of that means I can trust you.”

“You’re right,” Lucifer agrees. But he’s smiling now. No sadistic glee, just steady and satisfied, a chessmaster seeing checkmate two moves ahead. “I’m sure you have plenty of other people to trust.”

He puts his fingers to Sam’s forehead again, and the quiet takes Sam by surprise before he can dodge the touch. 

Sam is back in that outdoor place, then, with the low sighing of the wind, Dean and Amara standing in front of him. 

And she’s _kissing_ him. The Darkness is kissing his brother, and Dean is leaning into the kiss, his hand hovering somewhere near her waist. Sam doesn’t want to believe it, but his brain insists on putting it all together anyway. 

The way she’d looked at Dean with parted lips, like she was breathing in smoke. The fact that Dean hasn’t stabbed her or run like hell. The fact that Dean is here and not with him, isn’t even picking up his phone. Sam feels something fracture inside of him.

“Stop it,” he gets out, and the rumble of thunder in his ears is a blessed relief.

It echoes through the empty hellscape around them. Lucifer watches him through the gloom, deadly calm.

“I think your brother just picked a side.” His eyes shine like a cat’s. “Your turn.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me? [LJ](http://anactoria.livejournal.com) | [Tumblr](http://anactorya.tumblr.com)


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